The Hindu : National : AIADMK petitions EC on voters' list

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 17, 2004

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National

AIADMK petitions EC on voters' list

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, JUNE 16. The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam today urged the Election Commission to carry out an intensive door-to-door verification of the voters in Tamil Nadu through an independent and credible non-governmental organisation expressing doubts over the conduct of employees deployed for the task.

Following up its petition of June 6, the AIADMK delegation led by its Parliamentary Party leader, P.G. Narayanan, met the Chief Election Commissioner, T.S. Krishnamurty, and submitted another petition pointing out `irregularities and malpractices over collusive deletion of genuine voters and inclusion of bogus voters''.

The party charged that more than 43 lakh genuine voters were deprived of their right to exercise franchise due to the "vindictive manner with definite political motive to delete the names of genuine voters so as to give advantage to opposition political parties as against other political parties''.

Stressing on an independent and credible non-governmental organisation, the party said it was necessary to ensure that the "electoral democracy is not any more butchered by the politically motivated employees of the Election Commission deployed in Tamil Nadu''.

Having lost all the seats it contested in the recent Lok Sabha polls in Tamil Nadu, the party also demanded an enquiry into the "historic sabotage" of electoral rolls allegedly by State Government employees.

"It is the specific allegation of the AIADMK that State Government employees having been unreasonably perturbed by the strong measures taken by the government have joined with opposition parties like DMK... ," the memorandum said.

The party said "there need not be any involvement of Government employees in future" in the work of preparation of electoral rolls and suggested deployment of educated unemployed people for the task with the help of independent bodies.

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